Sports

Where are they now? Will Campbell

Multi-sport Sachem standout won Enners Award in 1996.

Will Campbell was playing highly competitive lacrosse when he was 7 years old, so by the time he was a senior at Sachem, he was a fully functional and gifted player.

Thanks to the Sachem Athletic Club, which recently joined with Sachem Youth Sports to form the Sachem Sports Club, Campbell traveled to multiple locations to play the game, visiting Canada, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey, honing in on lacrosse and learning to grow as a player and person at an early age. That benefit separated Sachem from other districts on the lacrosse field.

Campbell played at Sachem in its heyday during the mid-1990s. He padded his stats and passed the ball to many great Sachem scorers from his attack position. The teams he was a part of only lost five total games from his freshman to senior years.

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"We dominated a lot of schools," he says. "Other schools would always complain that we had a lot of kids we picked from. We played two really strong lines at midfield and our third line was strong, too."

Sachem's third line, for most of the 1990s, was just as good as many other first lines at opposing schools. The Flaming Arrows took to the road and traveled to Pennsylvania during Campbell's tenure, beating that state's best team, then hosted Poway High School from California and beat that state's best team, 20-2. Simply put, Sachem was dominant.

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During Campbell's junior season, Sachem lost to West Genesee in the New York State tournament in 1995 and then lost to Ward Melville in the final game of his high school career the following season.

Campbell set himself apart as a leader multiple times during his lacrosse career, but one specific moment sticks out, he said. During a practice in his senior season, former Sachem coach Rick Mercurio yelled at a sophomore who flubbed a play, but Campbell stepped up and said it was his fault.

"Coach Mercurio said that's what he wanted to see in his leaders," Campbell recalls.

That aided in his winning the Lt. Ray Enners Award in 1996, Sachem's first winner of the honor. Another strong tie was that Campbell's father Donald had been shot in Vietnam and earned a Purple Heart. It was the same war that Ray Enners tragically died in, fighting for his country, protecting his fellow soldiers.

"The Army part of it really gets me," Campbell says. "I'm very honored that I was able to get the award."

Still, his lacrosse ability spoke for itself.

"He could shoot on the run, improvise on the field, direct," Mercurio says, "but that award is not just the best lacrosse player in the county. It has a lot to do with character. You have to respect them as players and as people. When other coaches say, 'man I'd love to have that guy on my team' – it comes down to that."

On the football field, Campbell was a terrific defensive back, sharing the same field as many great Sachem football players, including Dave Caputo, the current defensive coordinator at Sachem North. The 1995 team is one of the top teams the program has ever produced. Minus the loss to Lawrence in the Long Island championship – Sachem's only appearance in the big dance – it very well may have been the best year ever thanks to tailback James O'Neal and his thoroughbred presence.

The key part of being a member of any Sachem football team from 1971-2002 was playing for Fred Fusaro, a man with one of the most intimidating demeanors in Long Island sports history. That, accompanied by Mercurio's own demanding character, helped Campbell grow as a man.

"I looked at both of those coaches as father figures," he says. "They always made sure that I was inline. I love both of them."

There was a brief time before his junior season when he was thinking of not playing football, but a phone call from former assistant Tony Petillo made him think otherwise. For those who don't know Petillo, he has a temper when it's needed and was a soldier in Fusaro's army.

"I was at a friends house and he calls," Campbell says. "He said, 'why aren't you down here at camp?' He said he had the nurse ready to give me my physical and to get my [butt] down there." He went.

He and Caputo shared the Black Helmet Award during their senior season, which is given to the hardest hitting, hardest working and most dedicated Sachem football player each year.

At first, Campbell thought he was going to attend the University of Massachusetts and had deep talks with Minutemen head coach and Long Island native Greg Canella, but he had trouble with his NCAA clearing house paperwork and stayed away from the Division I game. He opted for Division III Hartwick and started as a freshman in 1997.

Campbell, who led the team in goals and assists, helped Hartwick move from 16th to 6th in the nation by season's end, but he lasted just one season before returning to the Island to play at Southampton College for former Sachem player Ralph Pepe, now the head coach at Westhampton Beach High School.

It was a more pleasing situation for Campbell, who was reunited with five other former Sachem players, but it was poor timing and the college folded after that season. So, Campbell went into the working world and was without college lacrosse for sometime. In 2005, he was ready for a return to the classroom. Luckily, he knew C.W. Post coach Tom Postel because he played with his children in the Sachem youth leagues.

"He asked me if I was willing to play," Campbell recalls. "I didn't have scholarship money, but I walked on the team as a 26 year old."

Campbell played his final two years of eligibility at Post and was team captain in 2006.

Today, Campbell lives in Chicago and works for Henry Schein, a Fortune 500 company based on Long Island.


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